A $300m Gauguin?
February 9 2015
Picture: New York Times
The New York Times has reported that Gauguin's When will you Marry?, above, has been bought for $300m from a private collection. The Qatari's, who recently bought Cezanne's Card Players for a reported $250m, are reported to be the buyers. Says the NYT:
The sale of the 1892 oil painting, “Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?),” was confirmed by the seller, Rudolf Staechelin, 62, a retired Sotheby’s executive living in Basel, Switzerland, who through a family trust owns more than 20 works in a valuable collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including the Gauguin, which has been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel for nearly a half-century. [...]
“The real question is why only now?” Mr. Staechelin said of the Gauguin sale. “It’s mainly because we got a good offer. The market is very high and who knows what it will be in 10 years. I always tried to keep as much together as I could.” He added, “Over 90 percent of our assets are paintings hanging for free in the museum.”
“For me they are family history and art,” he said of the artworks. “But they are also security and investments.”
In The Art Market Monitor, Marion Maneker says the $300m figure 'seems plausible and not too unreasonable'. He also points to the Staechlin family's 'very smart use of museums as an art bank for a family’s prime asset.'
I was asked by a leading news organisation to go on the telly and talk about the sale. However, they were clearly after someone who would froth about the price, and say that the picture was not 'worth' $300m. It was put to me that had the painting been sold at auction, it would never have fetched $300m. Thus, the $300m was distorting the art market.
Which of course is not right. First, a painting is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it, period. Second, we can never know that the painting would not have fetched $300m at auction - these things are unpredictable.
Update - a reader writes:
It did strike me that the National Gallery is now well and truly buggered if it wants to try and fill the yawning gap of a major figure piece by Gauguin.
If the story is true, Michael Levey should have disregarded his personal taste and purchased Annah the Javanese when it was offered thirty odd years ago – the Gallery could have afforded it then.
Update II - in response to the above point, another reader writes:
Hmmm. Money aside, not sure a major figure painting by Gauguin will ever be on the National Gallery’s agenda if the recent Wilkie acquisition signals the direction of travel.
Update III - there's a video of the exhibition opening here.
Update IV - the Staechelin family have removed all their pictures from the Kunstmuseum in Basel.
